Dynamism, a gale-force personality and a determination to succeed in business laid the foundations of pioneer shipbuilder Charles Palmer's considerable fortune.

Dynamism, a gale- force personality and a determination to succeed in business laid the foundations of pioneer shipbuilder Charles Palmer's considerable fortune.

Thanks to his enterprise and good business sense he expanded a 300-house village into a town of more than 30,000 people in his own lifetime, once he'd moved there to create one of the most famous shipyards in the world.

They didn't call Palmer the Iron Man of North East industry for nothing.

Nobody got in the way of his single-minded high-octane approach to turning his industrial dreams into realities. He latched on to good ideas and pursued them for all their worth.

As a young man in the coalfields of County Durham, he'd laid the foundations for his industrial empire in Jarrow, South Tyneside.

The town grew around his revolutionary shipyard and the blast furnaces, steelworks, steel-plate rolling mill and marine engine works that he also built to maintain high-volume production in the neighbourhood he loved.

He stepped on to the road to success in 1846, when - while still in his 20s - he partnered colliery and cokeworks owner John Bowes, from Barnard Castle, County Durham, at his Marley Hill pit, near Gateshead.

With the profits he made while managing that mine, he bought his own coalfields.

But his opportunity for lasting fame came along when the bottom fell out of the North's coal market.

By the late 1840s, pits in Durham, Northumberland and Cumberland were struggling to compete with Midlands collieries using the new steam railways to speed their coal to the domestic and international markets in London.

The North coalfields were still using sailing colliers to take coal to the capital.

It took the ships a month, sometimes longer in bad weather, to get there. Then they had to get back home.

The future looked less than rosy for the North's coalfields . . . until Palmer decided he could beat steam on land by using steam at sea to transport the coal and reduce the sell-on costs.

In 1850, while still managing pits with John Bowes, he hit on the idea of building screw-propelled steamer colliers and set about putting his brainchild into action.

In shipping and mining circles in the North he was written off as a young fool. Steam power at sea was still a novelty, and his idea would never work, claimed the old guard.

Undaunted and convinced he was on to a winner, Palmer, along with his brother George, rustled up the money to lease riverside land at Jarrow. The famous Palmer's shipyard was born.

The first vessel, launched in 1851, was an iron paddle tug, the Northumberland.

The following year, Palmer astonished the shipping and mining world when he launched the collier John Bowes, the world's first iron-built screw-powered collier.

Never a shy or retiring type, Palmer invited what seemed like the world and his wife to the launch, and hundreds witnessed the historic moment.

A ship launch on Tyneside had never generated such interest before.

When the ship made its maiden voyage to London, fully laden with 650 tons of coal, the knockers were convinced that its first trip would also be its last.

But the John Bowes proved them wrong, chugging south at a steady eight knots and returning within five days.

North East coal was marketable again as prices tumbled.

The John Bowes was the first of dozens of colliers built at Palmer's yard. So many were launched, one after the other, that it was jokingly said Palmer had them built by the mile and chopped up to the length required.

It was the phenomenal success of Palmer's colliers that led to more orders for ships of all sizes, including passenger vessels and cargo steamers.

But it was landing a prestigious Government contract for warships that cemented the fortunes of his burgeoning yard and the industrial supply plants he'd created along the South Tyneside riverbank.

The Crimean War led to his first Government warship order. The Terror, like the John Bowes, was ahead of her time. Admiralty bigwigs were impressed and in the following years many more warships followed.

Business boomed to such an extent that Palmer opened a second yard, across the river at Howdon, North Tyneside.

Palmer, always a pioneer, had introduced co-operative working for his employees and had the welfare of the rapidly growing new town of Jarrow at heart.

He gave the impression that his workers' families were part of his own family - he acknowledged that they had helped him found his fortune - and his benevolent approach endeared him to them.

Respect for Palmer grew when he funded the building of the Palmer Memorial Hospital at Jarrow in 1870, in honour of his first wife, Jane, who had died five years earlier.

Until the hospital opened, men injured at work on South Tyneside had to make a slow journey by horse and cart to Newcastle for treatment.

Palmer went on to become one of the truly great Victorians, and not just on his own doorstep. From 1874 he was the MP for North Durham, and he later became Jarrow's MP.

In 1875 he became Jarrow's first mayor and in 1886, in recognition of his contribution to the Crimean War effort and the country at large, he was made a baronet.

In 1862 Palmer retired from the day-to-day running of his company to concentrate on public life, although he remained its chairman.

By then, more than 10,000 people were employed by his industrial plants.

Palmer remained Jarrow's MP until his death in 1907, aged 84.

His yard continued to prosper, but it was hit hard by the Great Depression and finally collapsed in 1933 before being sold the following year to National Shipbuilders Ltd.

In the same year, the tough little John Bowes, which had secured the company's prosperity 81 years earlier, was lost at sea off the Spanish coast.

She had sailed under different names and different flags without a break and her lengthy career was remarkable by any standards . . . just like that of her creator.

Page 2: How to find out more on industrial pioneer

How to find out more on industrial pioneer

A new book, Palmers of Jarrow, by Jim Cuthbert and Ken Smith, offers a detailed look at the progress of Palmer's yard and is good on personal detail.

Published by Tyne Bridge Publishing at #5.99, it is obtainable from bookshops or direct from Tyne Bridge Publishing, City Library, Princess Square, Newcastle, NE99 1DX. Add #1 for postage.

A statue of Palmer stands in landscaped surroundings at Tyne Street, Jarrow, overlooking the river. It was paid for by the people of Jarrow and was unveiled outside the Palmer Memorial Hospital by Lady Parsons in 1904. It was moved to its present site in 1982.

The house Palmer built as his Northern home, Grinkle Park, nine miles from Guisborough, off the A171 Whitby Road, is now a hotel, but the Palmer family crest remains over the front door.

Palmer built the house in 1881 on the site of an ancient manor house, on a large estate which for centuries was the home of the Conyers-Middleton family and their descendants.

The hotel has three English Tourism Council stars, is elegantly furnished and has 20 bedrooms.

1855: Becomes MP for Jarrow after a reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies.

1856: Made a baronet for services to the nation.

1862: Retires from his company to spend more time on public duties.

1907: Dies at his Curzon Street home in London's Mayfair, aged 84, on June 4.

Page 4: He said it

He said it

* On competing with the railways: "As a coal owner and ship owner myself, I felt doubly interested in the subject of coal conveyance. It occurred to me that steam power on the sea afforded the only means of competing with steam power on land."

* On the impact of steam ships, in the late 1850s: "On her first voyage the John Bowes was laden in four hours. In 48 hours she discharged her cargo and in 48 hours more she was again in the Tyne."

* On why he sold his Jarrow empire, although he remained as its chairman, in 1862: "I felt it not only due to myself, to my family, to the whole district of the North of England and, I may say to the nation, that such a gigantic concern should be placed on a broader basis rather than depending on one individual."